Three of the biggest Hollywood movies that have come out this month — “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” “Draft Day,” “Transcendence” — have one thing in common: They don’t look like they were shot in L.A.

That’s because, for the most part, they weren’t. While the people who decide where to make movies uniformly say that they’d prefer to work in their hometown, better subsidies that other states and countries offer has made that almost impossible to justify.

“You want to encourage as big a broad spectrum of the business to be here,” noted Stanley M. Brooks, a prolific producer and director who served as chairman of the California Film Commission when the state’s first production incentives — now considered inadequate by just about everybody — went into effect five yeas ago. “We should be encouraging the most number of productions on all levels and not targeting any one specific piece of that pie. The key here is keeping jobs in California.”

Efforts are underway in the state Legislature to broaden the tax credit program so larger movie productions can shoot comfortably in California. Whether or not it will work will depend on how much money is allotted, if current restrictions on productions’ eligibility are meaningfully eased and if the percentage of expenditures producers get back becomes more in line with other states.

At the moment, though, there’s no doubt in Hollywood’s collective mind that California just doesn’t offer enough.

“It is a shame that we weren’t able to do what I wanted to do, which was make a film entirely in California,” said Oscar-winning “Inception” cinematographer Wally Pfister, whose directing debut “Transcendence,” starring Johnny Depp, opened Friday.

“If there had been a tax credit in place ...” Pfister mused. “This movie was set in Berkeley and a small desert town, and we found all the locations in and around the Los Angeles area. I know Johnny wanted to stay here, I wanted to stay here, and it was really about having our incredible crew here on the picture.

“As it turned out, we brought quite a few of them with us to New Mexico,” said the director, who wound up shooting only two weeks of the $100 million production’s interiors in L.A. “There were enormous tax savings there, and that’s why Sacramento has to step up.”

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“Transcendence” did not even qualify for California’s Film & Television Tax Credit Program, which currently is restricted to feature films with budgets under $75 million. And even if it had, there was no guarantee that it would have been among the lucky fraction of applicants chosen in the one-day-a-year lottery to get a slice of the program’s annual $100 million allotment.

While both of these restrictions — which have driven almost every major movie production out of the state for the past several years — are addressed by new incentives bills making their way through the California Legislature, that may not be enough to satisfy producers.

“When I’m looking at the incentives the state of New Mexico was offering versus the state of California ... Forget the budget level here, let’s forget that. Just the difference in the incentives that are offered, it’s not possible as a small businessperson to stay here,” explained Andrew Kosove, co-CEO of Alcon Entertainment, the independent L.A. production company that made “Transcendence.”

Kosove explained that, beside offering up to 30 percent in tax credits on a production’s spending, cast and above-the-line talent salaries qualified for the incentive. Those expenditures aren’t subsidized in California, where the tax credit for major features is 20 percent.

“You’re talking about a difference of over 20 percent,” Kosove figured, in overall cost-cutting. “That’s not good for this state. If you can get it to 10 or eight, then you can say, ‘Well, I get to keep everyone home, my family’s here, the quality of the crews.’ You can start to justify that. But the difference is not even close right now.”

As incentives fever has spread to more than 40 states and around the globe in recent years, Hollywood has quickly become dependent on them for a variety of reasons. Those include rising production costs in an era of expensive digital effects, increased promotional expenditures for what is now a worldwide business and bottom-line thinking by the conglomerates that own all the major studios.

This has made getting as much money as you can out of governments willing to pay you to come to their jurisdiction imperative.

“Everything about finance and production, these days, relates to where films are being shot,” said Lindsay Conner, co-chair of the Entertainment & Media practice at the L.A. law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. “It’s also true of television, but in television it’s a bonus to find a tax subsidy; in film, it’s almost a requirement these days. Very few studio films can be made without some type of subsidy. Whereas, 20 years ago, 30 and 40 years ago, everybody was used to filming in Southern California, today producers are willing to go wherever they have to go to get the subsidy money.”

Although it varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and production to production, Conner figured a $100 million film can expect to shave $10 to $20 million off its price tag with incentives.

He reiterated complaints often heard about the current California program, that each year’s lottery is over too quickly and higher-spending movies automatically have to look elsewhere now.

“The California system basically says not too many films and no big budget films, and that’s not a sufficient welcome mat these days,” Conner, who works on film financing deals all the time, said. “My understanding is that (proposals in Sacramento) substantially increase the amounts of the subsidy and take some of the restraints off so that more films and television programs will be able to participate. Those are very important steps.”

While L.A.’s politicians and new film czar Ken Ziffren say that making production here easier — permitting, parking, access to buildings, et cetera — is a concern as well as lobbying for better state incentives, money speaks very loudly.

“Smoothing productions is a great way to entice people to film in your location, but the tax subsidies are much more important as a driver of production decisions,” Conner said. “That’s why New York City is so successful. New York is not the easiest place to film, but with the city incentives on top of the New York state incentives, they really have gone a long way to make it financially attractive to film there.”

It’s a little different in Cleveland. It doesn’t have a city incentive, and Ohio’s state tax credits are currently capped at a mere $20 million per year.

Yet Cleveland hosted both “Captain America: TWS” and “Draft Day” simultaneously last year. Sure, those two productions got nearly $15 million of Ohio’s tax credits (though technically limited to $5 million per production, Marvel got $9.5 million back by dividing the “Cap” shoot into two separate units).

According, though, to The Greater Cleveland Film Commission president Ivan Schwarz, ease of filming helped bring Marvel back after a good experience with “The Avengers” there, and didn’t hurt when “Draft Day” chose to switch the film’s original home team, the Buffalo Bills, to the Browns.

“We’re doing things that you can’t do in Los Angeles anymore, that you can’t do in Atlanta,” said Schwarz, a former Hollywood location manager. “Y’know, we have rush minute, we don’t have rush hour. On a Friday, it takes two hours to get from Santa Monica to Century City. But if you want to make the company move during rush hour in Cleveland, Ohio, it takes you no time at all.

“If we can make it happen we’re going to make it happen, so don’t edit yourself,” Schwarz advised filmmakers. “Just ask us. There was a chase scene on a shore lane that we closed for two weeks that runs right through Downtown. Y’know, Chicago’s not going to close that down, and we were able to do it with the community’s support.”

“Captain America” hired 250 locals for its Cleveland shoot; “Draft Day,” 70 percent of its crew. The two films’ combined economic impact on the region was $120 million. Ohio also gives a 25 percent tax credit on in-state spending and 35 percent on Ohio resident wages.

“California’s not even in the ballgame right now,” Alcon’s Kosove said. “We’re a small business, and the profit margins in the movie business are narrow and it is a very risky business.

“I’ve got 30 employees, people with children. They don’t live in Bel Air and Beverly Hills; many of them live 40 minutes from the Westside of Los Angeles. I’m responsible for protecting them and their livings. So I’ve got pay careful attention to where, first, I can make an artistically successful film, but secondly, where I can get the best economic benefit for filming.”